


Never Satisified

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Asra (The Arcana)'s Route, Asra 6-2, Awkwardness, Canon Era, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Morning After, POV Julian, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, y'all know - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 10:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15683481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: On a morning that dawns bright and cheery, the atmosphere inside of the magician's shop is anything but. Julian wakes to the memory of a wild night and more feelings than he knows what to do with trapped inside of him. But really... what's new?





	Never Satisified

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Neon Trees' "Animal" (specifically, the Chase Holfelder version). Thanks, Asrian playlist. 
> 
> Fic itself is placed the morning after That One Paid Scene™️. (Asra, book six, chapter two.)
> 
> _How much are you willing to give, Ilya?  
>  All of me. _

 

The soft morning light shining through the small window in Asra’s room wakes Julian slowly. His head feels heavy; the scent of incense is strong in the air around him, and the sheets feel different from both those at the palace and in his own bed at home. When he opens his eyes, they are positively  _ assaulted _ by bright purples and pinks, mixed with slightly softer oranges that pop in the glimmer of the morning sun.

A thought comes to him, then: This is not his room. 

Once the realisation dawns on him, Julian finds himself in a quandary, because for the  _ life  _ of him, he cannot remember where he fell asleep the night before. 

And then, he sits up, and his lower back spikes with immediate pain, and he remembers. 

He remembers walking up to Asra’s door, remembers walking inside and falling almost immediately to his knees. A quiet groan escapes him as he is flooded with memory: Asra’s fingers in his hair, Asra’s tongue against his palm, Asra’s lips against his own, still slightly bitter from blood he’d lapped from Julian’s skin. He feels his blood boil again, the way it does whenever Asra gets close to him, even though the magician is seemingly nowhere to be found in the bedroom. 

That thought does manage to permeate the thick cloud of incense currently halting his brain function, and it sobers him slightly. Julian has… absolutely no clue where Asra is. He is not in the bed —in fact, the bed is rather cold on the side opposite where Julian is still lying— and he is definitely not anywhere in the room. Julian doubts that he’s hiding in the closet, which means that he’s either downstairs in the shop, or that… he's gone. The latter is much more likely, if Asra’s slippery nature of the past is any indicator of the present. 

And speaking of slippery, Julian suddenly feels a cool weight on his left leg, which jerks suddenly without his permission. The weight slides up, tickling at his side and coming to rest on his chest. A purple head pokes itself out of the sheets.

Faust. 

If Faust is still here, it’s suddenly a little more likely that Asra has actually stuck around. She bleps at him, sticking out her tongue and blinking in what Asra has described before as amusement. 

“Right. I’m sure  _ you _ think this is all hilarious,” Julian murmurs to her, and she bobs her head and ducks down. He winces, because Faust is always  _ cold,  _ but it doesn’t deter her from curling herself around his neck. She squeezes lightly; even though her solid form doesn’t quite wrap all the way around Julian’s neck, it’s enough to make him nervous when she squishes him this way. He’s pretty sure she knows it, too. 

Like master, like snake, Julian supposes wryly as he reaches up to rub a finger fondly along Faust’s coiled body. She shimmies into his touch, and he can feel her blep against his neck. A smile slips over his features despite the wariness he feels in letting her stay where she is.

Footsteps on the stairs cause Julian to tense, though, and he looks to the doorway to find Asra’s fluffy white head emerging from the lower level. The smile falls away as Julian meets Asra’s gaze. 

“You’re awake,” Asra says, features schooled into a carefully-crafted neutral expression. Julian swallows and feels his Adams apple bob against Faust’s scales. 

“Yes,” Julian replies cautiously, drawing out the word. If he stretches the one word out, then perhaps it will count for more, he thinks desperately. He doesn’t know what to say to Asra, not after they… did what they did the night before, together. 

To Julian’s credit, Asra doesn’t look as though he knows what to say, either. “I made breakfast,” he offers up. Faust lifts her head —only her head, Julian notes nervously— and stares at Asra in the way she does whenever Asra uses his magic to communicate with her. Whatever she says actually manages to embarrass Asra, because his cheeks go pink and he gives one good, sharp shake of his head. 

“That isn’t funny, Faust,” he says, and then sends an apologetic look Julian’s way. Faust plops her head back down against Julian’s neck, and Julian shrugs. He’s never been able to understand Faust, not the way Asra can. The closest he ever manages to come is figuring out her emotions by how hard she squeezes and what she does with her eyes. 

“What did she say?” Julian asks curiously. Asra’s cheeks go pinker. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, and it’s obvious that he’s going for nonchalant, but he misses it by a mile when the answer comes out much too quickly. It’s… odd, to see Asra so flustered. Asra is usually unshakeable, a rock in the otherwise churning sea of difficulty that has become Julian’s life. Julian doesn’t press the issue, mostly because he has no idea if it would go over well or not. After all, he’s still lying in Asra’s bed. If Asra tired of him, it would only take a moment for him to kick Julian out entirely. 

Julian attempts to sit up further and gets all the way to swinging his legs over the edge of the bed before his lower back sparks with pain again, and he makes a muffled sound from between clenched teeth when the discomfort fully registers, entire body stiffening. 

“Are you alright?” Asra is immediately at his side. Julian doesn’t even register him moving from his spot across the room before he’s there, one hand resting on a shoulder. Julian doesn’t hesitate to lean into the touch, but he tries for a grin up at Asra. He doesn’t normally have to… look  _ up _ at Asra. He doesn’t much mind the change, though; in fact, it almost  _ feels  _ nice to have Asra looking down at him with such unveiled concern. 

“I’m fine,” Julian tries to reassure, but he winces when he tries to put pressure on his feet and actually stand. Asra’s hand on his shoulder squeezes tightly, insistently, and Julian follows the silent command and stops resisting. 

Faust takes the opportunity to move, slithering nimbly from her current place around Julian’s neck to Asra’s arm and up it instead. Asra doesn’t bat an eye as she perches across his shoulders, blepping at Julian again. 

“Ilya,” Asra begins, and Julian’s attention snaps to him. Asra always… always  _ insists  _ on using his given name. It’s been like that since the very beginning, the very first time they met, when Asra had looked him up and down upon his introduction and requested his  _ real  _ name, instead. Julian had been taken aback, but even then, he had been  _ consumed  _ by curiosity. Who  _ was  _ this mysterious so-called magician? 

“Ilya, did I hurt you?” The expression on Asra’s face betrays nothing but concern, but worry, so unlike the smug smirks and heated gazes from the night before. Julian doesn’t  _ understand _ Asra, even now. Their time together has brought nothing but more questions without answers. Who  _ is  _ this mysterious so-called magician? Why is he so calm and kind one moment, and so cruel and callous in the next? 

Julian accepts the cruelty, though. He accepts it all, everything that Asra deigns to give him. 

Accepting the kindness is often only made more difficult by the cruelty. 

“Who’s the doctor here?” Julian bluffs, reaching up to lay one hand over Asra’s against his shoulder. “I said I’m fine, and I am.” He squeezes the hand gently, doesn’t miss the uncertainty that spreads like lightning over Asra’s features. Chest aching just a little, Julian removes his hand again, and Asra pulls away immediately, as though the contact has burned him. Julian looks away and swallows hard to regain his composure. 

The air is heavy, thick with the scent of incense from the night before and the feeling of the unspoken words hanging between them. Julian wants to ask  _ why _ , wants to ask  _ how  _ and  _ again? _ , but when he even thinks it, his throat closes up dreadfully. Asking questions is… out of the question. Asra has made that quite clear. 

“So. Breakfast?” Julian says, forcing himself to smile again. He looks up at Asra once more and catches a look of relief before Asra’s features melt into that infuriatingly neutral expression once more. 

“Yes. I made breakfast,” Asra says, repeating himself. He takes a step back from Julian, and then another. Faust, on his shoulders, bleps again at Julian before tucking her head inside of Asra’s shirt. “I’ll… let you get dressed.” Without waiting for a response, Asra turns and all but flees down the stairs, taking Faust with him.

Blinking, Julian looks down to find that, yes, he is still naked. Well. That is… rather embarrassing, but he’s been through worse scrapes and come out on top, even without his clothes. The blankets cover his lap, but they slid down when he sat up, it seems, because his entire torso is bare to the world. Julian’s shoulder is still warm where Asra’s hand had been only moment ago. 

He heaves a sigh and sets about finding his clothes. To his surprise, they aren’t as far as he remembers tossing them haphazardly the night before; a neatly-folded pile sits on a chair just to the side of the bed.  _Asra moved them_ , Julian assumes. He finally manages to right himself, and he reaches for the clothes, only to stop dead at the sight of the  _ scar  _ on his hand. He has no doubt that Asra did  _ something  _ to heal it faster, because the cut from the night before should not have turned into a scar this quickly. Julian takes a good minute to stare at it, turning his hand about this way and that to investigate it. It looks  _ professional _ ; although the thought of Asra’s magic doing something that a doctor should have done makes him nervous, Julian can’t deny that he’s glad that he will have full use of his hand after the night before. 

He dresses himself quickly, tries to brush the wrinkles from his shirt, and musses his already-mussed hair before sighing again and turning to the stairs. He’s going to have to face the music eventually, he thinks to himself. It might as well happen now, just to get it over with. 

Expecting the worst, as he so often finds himself doing, Julian shoulders what little pride he has left and begins the painful walk down to the shop below.

**Author's Note:**

> Faust most definitely made some kind of comment about Julian _being_ breakfast, but you didn't hear it from me. 
> 
> Kudos/comments are love! Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans


End file.
